


Teacher

by bunnyfication



Series: Lost and Found [4]
Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 13:09:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13952229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunnyfication/pseuds/bunnyfication
Summary: Hakkai didn't expect to ever teach a class again.





	Teacher

Cho Hakkai never thought he’d be a schoolteacher again. That had been Cho Gonou, before Kanan was taken and he knew the full extent of his potential for ruthlessness.

Gonou may have thought he was a good teacher, once, but that was before he’d looked into the eyes of a father of one of his favourite students, watching the light fade from them and feeling nothing.

Besides, in hindsight, he hadn’t really cared, deep down, for any of those children, beyond a sort of surface level interest in their academic advancement. As much as a fruit farmer cared for a plant, perhaps, as part of his livelihood. He didn’t sigh for the apples, once they’d been taken off his hands.

There was Goku, but he hardly counted. He already knew the truly important things, and Hakkai owed it to Sanzo to help him with what he could.

And he’d never really wanted children of his own, even if Kanan hadn’t been against it for her own reasons. She’d been more than enough for him. Maybe, he thought later, he might have envied any child of theirs for her attention, as monstrous as his heart had always been, long before the death of Cho Gonou the man and his bloody rebirth as a youkai.

He didn’t know why he’d jokingly told Gojyo, that time on the bridge as they discussed the people Hazel brought back from the dead, that he wanted an indestructible wife who’d give him a large family.

Perhaps he’d seen the tension in the shoulders at the corner of his eye, the discomfort radiating from his friend, and said the first thing that came to mind to break the mood, the most ludicrous thing he could think of.

The only grain of truth in it, perhaps, was what he’d been saying right before and after.

That he’d realized his heart, hollowed out as it was by the loss of Kanan, did have more room than he’d thought, had been filled to the brim until it ached. Even if it had taken him a long time to accept it.

The thing about Gojyo was that he so often looked surprised to be cared for. Was skittish over every new form of it Hakkai presented him with, and once he’d recognized that for what it was… oh, it was probably then he’d been done for.

Someone like him, selfish and possessive and hungry to be… needed, as he was, could never have resisted that, the chance to become irreplaceable. Or at least seem so.

It was not that he could think of a specific future but was able to see _a future_ , beyond the mission. He didn’t dare inspect the shape of it yet, then, in case it never came to be.

He’d left himself open, in that moment, for Gojyo to see, out in bright daylight, as if he’d known neither of them was ready to grasp that thread that pulled between them, tighter by the day as they struggled to stay alive on their increasingly dangerous journey.

A part of him had thought they never would get that chance, had accepted it with a sort of wry melancholy.

Maybe, he’d thought morbidly one evening as he lay in bed unable to sleep, if they were lucky, they’d fall close to each other in the final battle, and he’d crawl to clasp Gojyo’s hand in his last moments, with his last strength, a gaze that said it all shared between them.

There was a strange comfort in the thought, and he’d closed his eyes, sleepy at last.

It didn’t happen like that.

It was… Gojyo, after he almost died fighting the sage, after Goku had finally woken up but before they left the little cottage, who came to him in the night and roughly told him to be quiet and then kissed him. It had been desperate and kind of sad, but he hadn’t had the heart to turn him down.

 He hadn’t wanted to.

They hadn’t really spoken of it then either, not for a while.

“You’re… I can’t lose you, ok?” Gojyo had told him the night they camped above the Houtou castle, his voice choked up and halting, his hand cold where it grasped Hakkai’s between them.

He’d smiled, felt it bloom on his face, too delighted against the stifling worry on Gojyo’s.

“Never,” he’d promised recklessly, and meant it.

Gojyo was his, he’d thought with a wave of possessiveness, his own fingers closing on Gojyo’s hand, had always been, from the moment their eyes met that first time in recognition.

Nothing could touch that, not his own incompleteness nor death.

And still, he was surprised that they survived that fight, all of them.

Even Sanzo, though he’d worried for a long time afterwards that the lack of drive would do what everything else had failed to.

Because he hadn’t been needed at Kei’un, the place he’d once occupied there long gone. It was so for all of them, but Hakkai could tell Sanzo didn’t have the energy to reclaim it. Perhaps he would have, in time, but Hakkai wasn’t surprised they moved on when given the option. Maybe all of them were relieved to leave the ghosts of their old lives there behind, he supposed.

The child was a surprise. Gojyo was good with her, which in hindsight should not have surprised him. And Hakkai couldn’t say he was entirely comfortable with that, but it wasn’t like they’d adopted her. Collectively, perhaps. It may be a monastery, but there were others there who had taken care of babies before.

Besides, Hakkai had seen Sanzo acting like he hardly noticed the child, and cared less, but when he thought no one saw he’d look at her with a wondering frown. And then there were the paper planes. He wasn’t sure what was going on there and doubted he ever would, but Sanzo did care, for whatever reason. More than he wanted to.

Wasn’t it always that way with him, Hakkai thought with a secret smile, daring, eventually, to hope.

So, there they were, in this new place, settling in slowly. And Gojyo found somewhere he was needed, desperately, at the youkai orphanage. Hakkai wished he could say he wasn’t jealous over the time and energy he spent on those children. But it was Gojyo with a big enough heart for all of them, not him.

He… accepted it, eventually.

And still, he’d never thought he’d be a teacher again.

Hakkai startled out of his thoughts by a crashing sound outside, gaze focusing on a page in front of him with nearly illegible script marching unevenly over it.

In the school room, several children had started too, and Lei had been the first to rush to the window, eager as usual to take any reason to quit her schoolwork. Hakkai got up slower, walking over to peer outside, feeling the attention of the other children in the room on him.

“Chun, you ok?!” Lei shouted, leaning halfway out of the window.

At her shout, more children got up and migrated closer, crowding behind them. Hakkai sighed inwardly.

Through the window, he could see Chun Lai lying on the ground, next to a fallen ladder. On the roof, one of the goats was still standing ready for attack. 

He sighed. He had told Gojyo the goats would be trouble, too intelligent by far. They should have just stuck to the poultry or gotten a pig… maybe next year.

Gojyo came running out of the main house then, sprinting over to Chun and leaning over him, asking if he’d broken anything. The boy sat up carefully, grimacing, and then shook his head tentatively.

“Look, if the goat is on the roof, you don’t have to milk it, ok?” Gojyo told him, exasperated.

Chun looked to be near tears, especially once he noticed everyone staring at him through the schoolroom window. He was one of the kids that had reacted to Gojyo’s fumbling care by getting clingy, rather than… any of their other rainbow assortment of reactions to trauma, Hakkai thought with an inward sigh.

No, he hadn’t seen himself ever becoming a schoolteacher again, let alone running an orphanage with a man who really tried to become a parent to every broken child that came their way. Even if he hardly realized it himself.

He was still slightly resentful that he didn’t have Gojyo’s undivided attention, and he could only hope the fact he was fully aware it was a petty feeling made it better.

Just a bit better.

That, and he could make sure the children had some useful skill to take with them to the hostile world that waited them.

“Ok then, back to work,” he said, in his teaching voice.

 

**Author's Note:**

> ... Hakkai thinks he's just kind of there, but I think some of the kids actually react better to Hakkai's kind of more distant, practical caring/advice than they do to Gojyo's empathy. They do a decent job of it together. 
> 
> Also one day Hakkai will realize his "wish" literally came true which actually gives me an idea for the Gojyo pov one I feel like I should at least try to write at this point. :9


End file.
